by Scott O'Dell
Cíbola I had heard of many times before. Aboard ship there was talk of little else, and in the City of Mexico, and in Seville, even in the town of Ronda men spoke of cities where the houses were fashioned of gold and the streets themselves paved with it, street after street. But these tales had meant little to me. The making of maps was the only thing I had thought of.
It was the only thing I thought of now as I sat at my table. Yet as the day wore on and the ship bore northward to the straining of blocks and the play of dolphins around us, my mind must have wandered. In less than an hour I made two unaccountable mistakes which took me long after suppertime to correct.
Night had come and the ship was quiet. The lantern swung gently in its gimbals. The map was again going well when the door opened and Captain Mendoza slipped quietly into the cabin. It was a hot night but he was muffled to the chin.
"You did not come to supper," he said, "so I bribed the cook, a greedy fellow as you know, and brought along a lamb shank."
From the folds of his cape he drew forth a well-larded bone, for which I thanked him, of a sudden very hungry.
Closing the door, he turned to look over my shoulder. "The map progresses, I see. But more than half of it, all eastward from the ocean, still remains a blank."
"It will remain so, I fear. For a time."
"You might draw in a mountain or two, at least." Mendoza said. "A few wild animals and an Indian. A river. It would make things look better all around."
"Perhaps there are no Indians there, or rivers or mountains," I said. "Possibly it is an ocean sea, like the one we sail."
Mendoza reached up and adjusted the lantern wick. I waited, thinking that he was about to speak again of the Seven Cities, new tales that I had not heard, though I had heard many.
"If I were you, if I were a cartographer," he said, "I could not rest until I beheld that vast country which you have marked with the word UNKNOWN. It would haunt me day and night, just to look at it and think that no white man had set foot there."
"It does not haunt me," I said. "But I think of it. I would like to travel and see it."
"If you do," he replied, "then no longer will it be unknown. For the map you would make of it would be published in Seville. In Paris. And Amsterdam. And London. Everywhere. Overnight you would win renown. A boy of sixteen, yet renowned in all the world."
He looked down at the map.
"What you do now has been done before," he said. "You add a little. You take away a little. Put in an island. A windrose. But still the map is much like the one made months ago during the voyage of Admiral Ulloa."
"It will be better than his," I answered, boasting.
"Yes, señor. But your map still remains a copy, which you must acknowledge when you come to sign your name to it."
Mendoza drew the cape around his chin. "Enjoy your lamb shank," he said. "As you do, consider my advice." He opened the door, scanned the deck fore and aft, then looked at me. "And make your choice quickly, by tomorrow at the latest."
While I ate a tardy supper, the click of his heels sounded on the deck, to and fro. When I snuffed out the lantern and lay down in my bunk, I still could hear them. They were the steps of one who heeded nothing, who would grapple with anything or with anyone, be it a ship or an officer of the King. They were the steps of a man who would walk through the fires of hell to reach that which he coveted.
2
MORNING DAWNED CLEAR with a light wind at our stern. In the night the hills had given way to a line of jagged headlands. Black tailings seemed to flow from them into the sea to rise there in reefs and rocky mounds and pinnacles. It was a desolate scene that met our eyes, and awesome to behold.
About an hour after dawn, Admiral Alarcón ordered the San Pedro brought up into the wind. The other two galleons of the fleet, as I remember, were astern and out of sight. He then ordered everyone to gather in the waist of the ship, those on duty and those sleeping.
With his bronze beard blowing in the wind, hands on hips, his countenance without any emotion that I could note, he faced us.
"Captain-General Coronado and his army," he said, "escape our watchful eye. Therefore, I am sending ashore a band of men to seek them out wherever they may be, east or south or north. The leader of this band is Bias de Mendoza, a captain of that lost army." He paused and made a slight bow toward Mendoza, then again addressed the crew. "All those of you who wish to join the brave captain, step forward."
I glanced at Captain Mendoza. He did not betray any emotion.
A moment before, as on the days just past, the men had been alive and restless. But now every eye among them was fixed upon the nearby coast. They stared at the angry surf, the black mounds and pinnacles, the jagged headland, and beyond at the plain that stretched endlessly away to the horizon. Down the length of the deck there was not a sound. On their faces was the look of those who for the first time gaze upon the very entrance to Inferno.
Then four stepped out, all of them soldiers who were bound to Captain Mendoza. One, Torres, was the keeper of his horses. The other three were his personal musicians, Lunes, Roa and Zuñiga. Not one of the crew followed after them.
Alarcón repeated his command, "Those who wish to join Captain Mendoza, step forward." His eyes ran through the ranks, man by man, and at last rested upon me.
For myself, I stood rooted on the deck, too surprised to move. I was not surprised that the Admiral had learned of Mendoza's plan to seize the ship. What did surprise me was that he had taken this cunning way to forestall it.
Once more, for the third time, Alarcón repeated his command. As he slowly spoke the words in a bull-like voice, his gaze ran through the ranks and again rested upon me.
Uneasily I shifted my weight. Sweat gathered on my forehead and ran down my face. I looked away from him, along the ranks of unmoving men. Gladly would I have leaped the rail into the sea.
By chance, then, my eyes met those of Captain Mendoza. He stood stiffly beside Alarcón, watching me from under his heavy lids. Of a sudden I was in the cabin and he was speaking. I heard his words clearly, as if he were speaking to me at this moment. "...the map you would make would be published in Seville ... Everywhere. Overnight you would win renown. A boy of sixteen, yet renowned in all the world."
I gathered myself, and almost against my will, took one step forward.
There was a long moment of silence. Then Alarcón doffed his plumed hat, bowed low in the direction of Captain Mendoza, and strode off along the deck.
3
AT NOON OUR LITTLE BAND, six in all, moved away from the galleon San Pedro. We would have left much sooner except for the business of the horses and Captain Mendoza's clothes.
The Captain owned many changes, each of different color and cut, entire from boots to plumed hats. Each needed to be carefully packed, as well as breastplates and morions. For myself, I took only a set of instruments, cartographer's supplies, a journal, and the clothes I stood in, knowing that I must carry everything on my back.
Loading of the two horses, a blue roan from Barbary and her foal of three months, required care. Many times they were lowered over the side of the ship, up and then down, suspended from the slings in which they had traveled from Acapulco, before they were secure in the longboat. Yet they and Torres, their keeper, were safely ashore and the boat was returning as we made ready to leave the galleon.
To mind the sails, for we were all landsmen, the Admiral sent one of his men. From the rail he called down his last instructions.
"I sail for another day and night," he shouted. "For a week I lie at anchor. Tell this to Coronado if by chance you meet."
He smiled and waved a jeweled hand. There was still no sign that he had triumphed over Mendoza. Nor did Mendoza himself show that he had been outwitted. He stood in the bow of the longboat, his jaw outthrust, and with a last prideful gesture called to his three musicians—Zuñiga who played the flute, Lunes who strummed a guitar of five strings, and Roa the drummer. At his signal the three struck up a
lively tune.
The San Pedro dipped her flag, her crew cheered—wondrous loud, I thought, because they were not leaving—and on a light wind we moved away.
The cheers slowly faded. The galleon grew smaller on the horizon and then, as we rounded an islet, suddenly was lost to view. One by one the musicians stopped playing. Seated in the bobbing stern, my few possessions gathered around me, I stared at the place where the ship had been. I thought of my cabin and the map I had left on the table, unfinished.
Mendoza turned and swept us with a glance.
"Comrades," he said, "put the ship out of your minds. For in this life you shall never see it again. Fix your thoughts instead upon the task of getting ashore and upon the land of the Seven Golden Cities that lie beyond. And mark this well, each of you. We shall find these cities if it takes a year or five. If we walk through the soles of our boots and to live have to eat the parts that remain."
Again he signaled the musicians and turned his back upon us.
To a brisk tune we left the islet. A rocky beach lay ahead, at a distance of half a league. Beyond it a defile wound steeply upward to a treeless promontory. There against the sky I saw three small figures, Torres and the two horses.
I idly noted that the sky above them was changing from blue to white. Clouds were beginning to move through this pearly mist on a wind that did not blow here on the sea. Ulloa's sailing instructions, left behind in the cabin, I could not remember. Yet I was certain that both wind and haze were portents of foul weather, in which these seas abound.
We then came upon a series of low-lying islets. As we entered a winding corridor between them—a place of remarkable beauty where the water was clear like air and fish of every hue darted—at that very instant I heard a prolonged hiss. It was the sound of a monstrous snake.
There was a second prolonged hiss. And then in a moment's brief time came the sound of a thousand serpents venomously breathing upon us. The moving sea flattened and from its surface pellets of water, hard as stone, whipped our faces.
From my memory of Ulloa's instructions, a thought raced through my mind. June was the month of the Chubasco, wind with rain. Spring and Fall were the seasons of the dry Santana. The most dreaded wind born in all the wilderness of Cortés' Sea blew in January. This was summer but still, somehow, that wind was blowing now and we were in its path.
"Cordonazo!" I shouted.
The word was driven back into my throat. It made no difference. None in the longboat would have heard or understood. Wrestled to their knees by the wind, our men were trying to claw through the mound of provisions to a safer place in the bilge. Alarcón's sailor gallantly clung to the rudder.
The Cordonazo's first breath had parted a rope. The sail now streamed over our heads like a banner. The sailor rose to save it, but when he reached out the wind lifted him into the air. He fell upon the sea and as a man slides on the deck of a ship, so hard was the surface of the water, he slid past us and out of view.
There was no hope of saving him. Indeed, in our hearts all of us felt that we would never save ourselves. Either one by one we would be plucked from the boat by the steel fingers of the Cordonazo, or we would founder at once, together.
The myriad, snakelike voices of the wind became one, a scream that rose and fell and rose again. An oar, a helmet, a cask of flour, a scabbard were caught by the wind and flung into the sea.
The shore disappeared. I saw by the pale sun that we were being driven into the northwest. From what I remembered of the chart the sea was open there, free of islands and reefs upon which we could be wrecked.
We raced out of the shallows where the wind had bitten off the waves. A hill of gray water now came up behind us. Our stern lifted high and we sank downward, downward until it seemed that we must founder on the bare rocks beneath the sea.
At this moment Captain Mendoza crawled the length of the boat and wrapped his arms around the tiller. But for this we would have drowned. As it was, the longboat listed and began to fill with water.
We bailed, using our helmets, until our hands bled. We bailed through the afternoon, never stopping. The sun went down and still we bailed, except Roa the drummer who lay as if dead.
A star showed in the east. It was small and wan, yet it proved an omen of good fortune. The wind lessened and began to blow in gusts. The moon rose in a sky swept clean of mist, turning the gray waves to silver.
For a time it was quiet, yet we waited. We looked at the sky, the sea, at each other, not believing that the Cordonazo had blown itself out and that we were still alive.
With the toe of his boot Captain Mendoza aroused Roa. "Drummer," he said, "a tune. Something of a lively nature."
Roa stirred himself and rose from the bilge. "The drum has grown soggy," he said.
"Play," the captain said.
While three of us bailed and Mendoza held the rudder, Roa beat his drum. The sound was hollow, but as we drifted into the north it served to enliven us.
4
THE WAVES GREW SMALLER in the night. Taking turns, two men bailing while the others slept, we kept the longboat dry. At dawn the sea was calm. By the early light we surveyed the storm's damage.
My first thought was for the maps and instruments, which I had carefully wrapped when we left the San Pedro and placed between two bags of flour. The flour was wet, but to my great relief the roll was safe, uninjured by the sea water.
Our swords and daggers, we found, were already beginning to rust. One of Mendoza's cloaks was gone, besides a small sack of trinkets we had brought for barter with the Indians. The oar and sail, however, blown away in the first blast of the wind, were our most grievous loss.
"We have been driven afar," Mendoza said, looking at the instruments I held in my lap. "How far, Maker of Maps?"
"It is impossible to tell until noon," I said. "Then I shall take a reading on the sun."
"What is your guess?"
"Ten leagues."
"How far away is the coast?"
"Perhaps five leagues."
"Then we should see it."
"Not from our height, unless there were mountains on the coast," I said, explaining to him that since the world was proven round the horizon lowered five varas every half league.
He did not wait to hear me out. "We head for the coast," he said, and gave orders for the stitching of a sail.
The sail was a makeshift, two blankets sewed together, yet it served to catch what wind there was. With it and the aid of our one oar, we set a course to eastward.
At noon we took our first water that day, drinking little from the goatskin Mendoza passed around. Our throats soon were parched again, for the sun shone fiercely upon us. It fell upon us like fiery rain. It struck the sea and shattered into a thousand barbs of light that blinded our eyes and seared our flesh.
At dusk we sighted land low on the horizon.
About the same time, sitting at the oar, I noted that the boat left no wake and that we were moving north-by-east in a crablike motion. It was as if the whole sea were flowing away from the land.
"I remember that Ulloa's chart speaks of strong currents in this part of the sea," I told Mendoza, "caused by the difference between high and low tide, often as much as twenty feet. We must be caught in such a current. Furthermore, the chart warns that a boat cannot move against these tides, but must go with them until they run their course."
Mendoza glanced at the coast, less than a league away. His face hardened and I could see that he meant to reach it. Jumping to his feet, he reset the sail to catch more wind and shouted for Zuñiga to help me at the oar.
"Pull, you sons of Spain!" he shouted.
And pull we did until our eyes started from their sockets. The heavy longboat did not change direction. Mendoza pushed me aside and took my place at the oar. Yet the boat sped onward with the powerful tide, farther and farther from the coast.
Until midnight the tide held fast. Then, as you open your hand and free a bird, it released us.
At th
is time, using the Pole Star, I found its elevation above the sea and thus our position, south and north. (Someday a man wise in these matters will think of a trustworthy way to tell distance east and west. Even now, I have heard, there is a navigator in Portugal who claims to have invented such a method. Would that he had been with us on the Sea of Cortés!)
"We have been carried back," I told Mendoza, "almost to the place I fixed at noon."
"But how far is the coast?" he demanded.
"That I do not know."
"A cartographer and you cannot tell right from left?"
I tried to explain to him why this was difficult, but turning his back, he raised the sail and again we set toward the east.
We were too tired to row, so we ate a few biscuits, took sips of water, and lay down to sleep, all of us except Captain Mendoza. He sat at the tiller, holding the goatskin of water, which was now half-empty, between his knees.
The sun seemed to grow hotter. We dug small caves among the baggage to lie in when we were not rowing. We drank no water until midday and then only one mouthful apiece.
Low yellow cliffs marched along beside us and a heavy surf beat against them. Through the afternoon we watched for a soft place to land, but saw none.
Night came and we sailed slowly on into the north. In the morning the yellow cliffs were still there. Fog hung over the sea but the sun quickly bore through it and sought us out.
We now were too exhausted to row, so we lay in our caves and came out only to take turns at the tiller.
We passed close to a small island covered with birds. They stood motionless as the longboat sailed by, their red beaks hanging open in the heat.
From the south white clouds rolled up and the wind died to a whisper.
"Tell us, scanner of the heavens, reader of charts," Mendoza said. "Tell us what Ulloa has about clouds."